


Homecoming

by DeCarabas



Series: Fugitives Together [9]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Act 1, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 21:13:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7238734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The return from the Deep Roads expedition. For the prompt "coming home."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecoming

They part ways with Varric outside the Hanged Man, weighed down with trophies from the expedition to be placed with the right buyers and converted into gold. Light and raucous noise spill invitingly into the street, and Anders feels out of place, like he’s still got the mold and rot of the Deep Roads in his lungs, his skin. He breathes in the familiar Lowtown scents of tar and the sea, tilts his head back to look at the stars, the comforting distance of them, the open air with no stone over his head. And though he’s passed a dozen turns that would take him into Darktown, he passes each of them by.

Hawke slows to a stop at the base of Gamlen’s steps, looking up at the light in the window, expression bleak, the prospect of explaining Carver’s absence looming before him. And Anders watches Hawke pat down his clothes anxiously, neatening, straightening, though everything they’re both wearing should probably be burned.

He could help break the news to Leandra, speaking as a Warden, as part of the order that had stolen her son away. The Warden who’d thought he could manage to guide them through the Deep Roads safely. So much for that.

“She’ll want a Warden to blame,” Anders offers.

Hawke snorts, manages a brief smile. “If I drag you in there with me, she’s never going to let you out again.” And guilt stabs at him, but then Hawke says, “The man who saved her baby’s life— _a Warden to blame?_ Maker’s sake, Anders.”

The sack that Hawke had been carrying over one shoulder falls to the ground with a clunk of Deep Roads gold, and suddenly he has an armful of Hawke.

“Thank you,” Hawke says, fervent, warm against his cheek. Smelling far too appealing for someone covered in road dust. And Anders closes his eyes, allows himself this moment. His private resolution to start putting some desperately needed distance between them can wait one more day.

He leaves Hawke after a somewhat bewildering promise to come by later and give Leandra a chance to thank him for helping them, for saving Carver’s life, once the family’s had time to process.

And then there’s nothing for it but to face what nearly two months of absence has done to his clinic.

Two months. As he turns his steps toward Darktown, the guilt that had been so curiously absent throughout the expedition crashes down on him all at once, without Hawke’s presence or his own duty as a Warden to steal his focus.

Maker only knows what new restrictions the Knight-Commander’s put in place in that time, what new ways she’s found to whittle away at what little freedoms those in the Gallows have left, what Alrik’s done. And he’s missed First Day, with its rare and precious chances for mages to be taken out of the Circle to provide a bit of entertainment for the holiday parties, heavily guarded but still so much easier to get in contact with than any other time of the year, without the risk of smuggled letters. His stomach twists at the thought. He’s going to have to talk to Bancroft, find out what he’s missed while he was off slogging through the Deep Roads, letting himself get distracted.

In the morning. First, he needs to find a place to sleep.

He has no illusions about how the clinic will have fared after being abandoned for so long, with its high windows and its convenient escape passage and the floors he’d scoured clean on his knees, the little space he’d carved out for himself. It’s just a question of which gang has laid claim to it in his absence, and what he’s going to do about that.

* * *

He’d never actually meant to start a clinic in the first place. Just sort of happened. What he’d meant to do was slip away after he left the ship, find someplace isolated in the Undercity where no one would notice if a particularly bad nightmare left him blue and glowing. But then one of the blight widows he’d traveled with across the Waking Sea came to him with a man clinging heavily to her arm and assurances that Anders will help, the same way he’d helped her, turning to him with so much faith.

And the people in the camps had gone without a healer for so long. And he thought maybe he’d just stay for a few days. Then he’d find someplace safer.

And the gang that had been holding onto that patch of Darktown before had needed to be cleared out. It had been satisfying, soothed his nerves—or Justice’s nerves, probably more to the point. Wrongs to right. A clear course of action to take. Nice and straightforward.

He thought it would be a space for the refugees. He hadn’t planned on making it _his_. Or Lirene sending patients his way. Or Evelina’s kids running to fetch him at all hours of the night. Or Tania the blight widow turning into his self-appointed assistant, hanging a lantern above his door.

And if he had a few nightmares, he was far from the only refugee from the Blight to have troubled dreams. And if sometimes those nightmares left a blue haze flickering over his vision, no one commented. Maybe they thought it was just something mages do, they just glow sometimes. 

* * *

The familiarity of Darktown’s paths settles into him as he makes his way to the clinic to assess the damage. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the place until now.

To his surprise, the lantern is still in place above the door, and lit.

The door swings open at his touch. And Tania’s bent over a table, focused on grinding a bowl releasing a heavy scent of elfroot and prophet’s laurel; and an armed and armored woman he doesn’t recognize is sitting at her feet, looking him over as he stands in the doorway. Casually assessing.

And one of Evelina’s kids brushes past him, a pile of folded sheets in his arms; stops, turns back. “Evening, Warden,” he says, as if Anders has only been gone a day. And the woman at Tania’s feet visibly relaxes. He’s not something she needs to defend the clinic from after all.

“Evening,” he echoes, dropping his pack heavily by the door as Tania looks up, smiles wide at the sight of him, and brushes off his inquiries about the patients.

“They’ll keep. Look at the state of you!” she tisks, and claps him on the shoulder. “Well, at least you’re home in one piece.”

 _Home_. He supposes he is at that.


End file.
